There is got to be a very fine line between keeping your cool and dealing with a crowd member getting under your skin. Yes, the fan is a paying costumer and as a professional player you are expected to take it. But now days that the politically correct is not only a rule of its own but somewhat of a mitigating force, it really seems that players need to be extra careful out there. Other wise it may cost them. After receiving his second foul of game three against the Miami Heat in the first quarter, cameras caught the moment as Joakim Noah said an expletive, followed by the slur. It is a shame, I believe, that the cameras didn’t catch the fan saying whatever it was he said that got Joakim fired up. I guess, if Joakim is expected to pay a $100.000 plus fine, the other fan should at least be banned from taking part of this sort of sporting events. But that’s never going to be the case. No. He is a paying costumer and he should walk out of this one without having to deal with either a substantial fine nor pressure from anti defamatory groups. In the press conference, Joakim said the following about the incident: "The fan said something that was disrespectful towards me," Noah said. "And I went back at him. Got it on camera. I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. Anybody who knows me knows that I'm not like that. I'm an open-minded guy. I said the wrong thing and I'm going to pay the consequences -- deal with the consequences -- like a man. I don't want to be a distraction to the team right now." Just a month ago Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers was fined $100,000 for directing the same slur toward a referee. And last week, Phoenix Suns president and CEO Rick Welts revealed he was gay. This could be considered quite a rare acknowledgement for someone holding a prominent position in men's sports. As far as I’m informed this is the first man in such a position to have ever come out of the closet. Some of Noah's teammates stood up for him Monday, saying that the fan went too far in whatever comments he was making towards the Bulls’ bench. I would support him too, but heck, I might risk crossing some sort of line and might get in trouble for it. Sure, Noah is a professional athlete, but it is not as if he was a public figure, or someone who put himself into the position of becoming a role model for anyone. Slurs come and go on all professional sports among fans, players, coaches and assistants. It’s certainly a good thing that football players were those helmets much of the time. It would take by surprise many sensitive ears to hear what is been said on the field. I’m not saying that it makes it right, or that it is a justification to what Noah or Bryant said. But heck, if commissioner David Stern really wants to clean his sport from this sort of things, he might as well go far enough as to punish the fan that got the ball rolling in the first place. But that won’t happen. And I guess that’s all right.
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